Book Report: Ayten Gündoğdu, Rightlessness in an Age of Rights: Hannah Arendt and the Contemporary Struggles of Migrants

 

I was excited to read this text because of a post I saw on Twitter that talked about Gündoğdu locating the ultimate authority for human rights, not merely in the nation-states that allegedly protect them but in human beings themselves who demand those rights by migrating contrary to unjust law.  That definition of what it means to be human realigned all the ethical pieces in my head.  Mythologically, within my faith, those are exactly the stories I know and tell to relate my values.  Pharaoh seeks to do genocide to the Hebrew people.  With God as Deliverer, Moses, Miriam, and the Hebrew people walk out of Egypt to seek out a broad and spacious land for community life and conduct.  (The HarperCollins Bible Dictionary relates that this is literally how the Hebrew Bible defines “salvation.”)  Fleeing Herod’s edict to kill all children under two years of age, Mary, Joseph, and Jesus walk into Egypt for haven and sanctuary. 

To be human is to flee injustice in search of a broad space, haven, and sanctuary.  If you are a faith nerd, like me, you point to Psalm 23 as a way of recognizing that the most dearly beloved Psalm in Christian communities has echoes of this definition.  Maybe it is why we treasure Psalm 23.  Deep down, Psalm 23 tells us what it means to be a human being.  I want to come back to that. 

This book was a critique of the human rights theory of Hannah Arendt.  Coming out of World War II, international declarations were made about human rights.  Arendt, as a Jewish person living in Germany, became increasingly concerned about the antisemitism she saw escalating in her country.  She was briefly imprisoned by the Gestapo and escaped to the United States where she became one of the most important political philosophers and theorists of the 20^th Century. 

Arendt wrote of a “right to have rights.”  In other words, how do we vest rights in such a way that they cannot be taken away when the political winds change?  When fiat or blame is leveled, how do we make sure that people or peoples become something less than human beings?  For when people are without voice, work, or labor, Arendt wrote, they are something less than human beings.  They are expulsed from humanity.  Arendt did not want the discourse of human rights to be something static or certain because, she believed, despots or governments would always find a way to maneuver around a concept that did not move with contingency. 

Here in the text was a word I had never encountered but now has become part of my lexicon.  Arendt thought the discourse on human rights should be “aporetic.”   If you are a regular reader to my blog (did I just hear an echo?), you know that I used this term in my Exodus/Wilderness sermon series.  Aporetic is a way of saying that we should work with Socratic questioning in ways that recognize some things always end up in perplexity.  If we keep at this process, however, we may find a path or a way where there was no path before.  We reexamine, “think without a bannister,” so that no trite or easy answers carry the day. 

Arendt makes it clear that human rights are not something that have any meaning outside of legal leverage and ongoing practices.  In fact, Arendt contends, that real legal codification and practice must be augmented to be real.  In our present day, this could not be any more clear.  Unless we augment rights around employment, voting, and fair housing, allowing those rights to remain static means they are eroded or taken away.  Gerrymandering seeks to take away the power of the vote.  Voting-by-mail is being regularly denigrated by President Trump.  Even the doubt cast on the electoral process may upend the presidential election process.  Augmentation is necessary as a way of meeting contingencies created by those who would subvert basic human rights. 

For Arendt, the basics of what it means to be human are about “cultivating a trust in the reality and regularity of life, establishing a relatively durable dwelling place, and creating public spaces to appear and act in the company of fellow human beings.” (p. 208)  My belief is that faith needs to actively incorporate such concepts into its teaching, preaching, and dialog.  Talking about God creating human beings without such real political and legal standing is romantic discourse without the everyday grit and substance faith should be about.  We should then challenge those in the halls of power who actively expulse others from humanity as people who have made themselves God’s adversaries.  If God created these people to be human beings, who are you to take away their voice, labor, and work, their dependable and routine life?

Gündoğdu relates the quandary Arendt faces as she struggles with rightlessness in an age of rights.  For if human rights are conferred by the nation-state through citizenship, what happens to human rights when people who are not citizens seek human rights?  Are immigrants and refugees not human beings because they have no path to citizenship?  Also, as citizenship is deflated, does it also mean that human rights are lost as well?  With economic inequality on the rise throughout the world, where do we vest human rights?

She references the sans-papieres movement as a way of establishing a “founding” of human rights by occupying a political space not open before, establishing new questions about equality and freedom (encapsulated in a term she references as “equaliberty”), and demanding their role as political subjects.  I think how young people have similarly done this through their legal and political work around climate change. 

This book was dense and a slog for me even as many of the concepts changed my worldview and had me recognizing I needed a more rigorous theology around what it means to be a human being.  Study is a spiritual practice for me because I experience joy in this kind of learning.  It may be that Gündoğdu is just ten times smarter than I am in a way that requires my whole brain for every sentence. 

In keeping with Arendt and Gündoğdu and their definition of what it means to be a human being, I had an incredible conversation with my daughter just the other day.  We talked about the basics of what it means to be a human being.  While voice, work, labor, the regularity and dependability of life, and the willingness to occupy political space are important characteristics of what we all should know as human beings, I do think some Biblical concepts should be added to the mix. 

Coming out of the Biblical Exile, Jewish prophets recognized that without human rights, they were building houses that they did not themselves live in or growing vineyards that they themselves did not eat the fruit of.  I think an investigation of “shalom” concepts like these are part of the ongoing, aporetic dialog that will lead us to a fuller understanding of human rights.  That sense of being able to weave together a community through construction and the growing of food and being able to enjoy the shelter and fruit of that labor are part of what it means to be a human being. 

Finally, one of the primary concepts of “shalom” that is found in Micah 4:4 and in Psalm 23 are key to what it means to be human.  That each of us might be able to sit underneath our own olive tree and find rest and leisure in God’s good creation are considered antidotes to imperial rule.  When there is a widespread sense that we do not have to be hypervigilant about what will happen next to find food or shelter, to avoid being killed by law enforcement, and that the world is not going to hell in a handbasket, we become more fully human.  That the Jewish people celebrate Passover every year, advised to recline in leisure as they eat the meal, is a reminder.  We are reminded that yes, trauma has come and may come, but there are times when our humanity is fully embraced in celebration, Sabbath, and rest. 

Sermon: Exodus/Wilderness Series 2, "Imago Dei," September 20, 2020

A Exodus 2 SJUCC 2020 

Psalm 107:39-43; Exodus 1:15-20; Mark 7:24-30 

September 20, 2020 

           At the press conference held by the family of Jacob Blake, the young African-American man shot seven times at point blank range by an officer of the Kenosha, Wisconsin, Police Department, Jacob Blake, Sr., his father, shouted words that should be self-understood, “He is a human being!”   He is a human being.  That remained etched in my brain because in the last month I have read three books which ask the question of what it means to be a human being.  Each book recognized this question as so critical because what we consider human, we give “the right to have rights.”[1]  Those people we do not consider human, we suggest they have no right to be at the table, not worthy to have voice and vote, not worthy to be treated with equal protection under the law, may her memory become a revolution.[2]

           In the Jewish creation story, human beings are created out of fertile soil (adamah) and Divine breath (ruach)—to be the imago Dei, the image of God, the shadow of God, in relationship with God’s good earth.  This is the truth of our existence.  You are a wondrous creation—made in the image of God.  I am a wondrous creation—made in the image of God.  We are a wondrous creation—made in the image of God.  Do not let any Pharaoh or Caesar or Sovereign tell you any different.  Repeat that until it gets deep within you and lodges within you so that absolutely nobody can tell you any different.  We are a wondrous creation—made in the image of God, God’s shadow in relationship with this good earth.

After Creator breathes human beings to life, Creator says, “Be fruitful and multiply.”  When Pharaoh seeks to commit genocide against the Children of Israel in Exodus, Chapter 1, by killing all the male children, he immediately shows himself to be God’s adversary, contrary to God’s command in the creation story. 

Pharaoh calls for all the male children to be killed--presumably because he does not consider the females to be a threat.  It is a huge mistake on his part—evidenced by the strength of the two midwives who break the law in an act of civil disobedience.  They oppose the genocide.  Shiphrah and Puah know that Pharaoh sees the Hebrews as nothing more than beasts of burden, less than human, and so they feed his ethnocentrism to spare lives—in the end, the life of Moses.  They say to him that “when the Hebrew women give birth, they are like lively animals.  The child spits right out before they can arrive on the scene.  What can we possibly do?”

           As the story goes, Pharaoh takes their word for it.  After all, he has already justified in his own mind the slavery of an entire people.  They are not human beings like Egyptians are human beings. 

           We could vest what it means to be a human being with human rights in empires.  But then Pharaoh decides that the Hebrews are too valuable as slaves to let them go out into the wilderness to worship their God.  We could, in an age of rights, let nation-states make decisions about what it means to be a human being with human rights.  But then we need an object of hatred and contempt.  So we sterilize African-American and Native American women, believing them not fully human.  We perform hysterectomies on immigrant and refugee women without their knowledge, tear children from their parents, and lock families in cages.  They are not human beings like we are human beings—right?  We are like Pharaoh—pretending that we can declare who is made of fertile soil and Divine breath. 

Warning.  As a faith leader, I am obligated to tell you.  It never goes well for God’s adversaries.

Recognizing that we need an understanding of human rights not rooted in political whim and opportunity to blame, political scientist, Ayten Gündoğdu, lodges the ultimate authority for human rights not merely in the nation-states that allegedly protect them, but in human beings themselves who demand those rights by migrating contrary to unjust law.[3]  Is Professor Gündoğdu’s definition not our Exodus story?  The Children of Israel know themselves to be created in the image of God by an exodus, migrating contrary to unjust law.  It is the Living God who calls them out.  Is this not the story of the Great Migration in our own country? --African American people who left the South in droves to arrive in places like Jackson, Michigan—human beings who migrated contrary to the unjust law in the South.

Hear the intentional language of the Biblical story.  Earlier in Genesis, the animals are created and become a swarm upon the earth.  The waters swarm with a swarm of living beings and all living beings created upon the land swarmed.^[4]  In Exodus, the Children of Israel multiply, with intentional language that tells us they became a swarm upon the earth.  This swarming, almost as if the Children of Israel are animals, causes great fear in the heart of Pharaoh.  But it all begins with a Pharaoh who had no knowledge of the Children of Israel.

           Whether it be in a well-written novel, a movie, or a Biblical story, not having knowledge of a people has led to sometimes well-meaning but heartless mission strategies, city planning, national agendas, or foreign policy.  The late Pat Buchanan used the term “swarm” to refer to the population of undocumented workers or, to use inappropriate language, illegal aliens in our country. 

And I remember the day when I was watching Lou Dobbs, way back when he was still on CNN, he started in and I knew it was coming.  I distinctly remember watching and saying, out loud, “Don’t say it, don’t say it, he said it.”  He referenced an “invasion of illegal aliens” was bringing “highly contagious diseases” to our country in an April 14, 2005, broadcast on CNN.  We were warned, as Pharaoh contemplated in his own heart for Egypt, that these hoards have come to reclaim the land for Mexico.^[5]  “Swarms,” “hoards,” and “invasion” all begin to make people sound less than human.  You would not be surprised then to learn that a number of articles written about the children coming across our border described it as “a swarm”—all so that it might get into your head, under your skin, and into your bloodstream that violence can be done to these children because they are less than human.[6]  We used the same language to destroy democratic and human rights movements in the very countries from where these children now are making that exodus. 

In the Biblical story, Pharaoh worries that, as Rev. David Lose puts it, these people who once were allies and honored guests may become terrorists in the land.^[7]   This story sounds vaguely familiar.  The Southern Poverty Law Center came out with a report stating that the guest worker policy and practice in our country is “close to slavery.”^[8]  Pharaoh begins to understand the Children of Israel as something less than human—without complexity, born for slavery, willing to do the jobs the Egyptians would rather not do.

Beware the people who do not know the plight of another.

But again, two women flip the script, and these two women do what Rev. Lose refers to as the “Butterfly Effect” in justice-making.  Lose writes,  “[The Butterfly Effect] is a courageous act of civil disobedience that changes history, for one of the boys that is spared will be called Moses and he will lead the Israelites out of Egyptian captivity.”[9]  Every justice-making movement needs Hebrew midwives who will wisely and resolutely stand against the bullying, flip the script, and help give birth to God’s plans for liberation and freedom.   Pharaohs will forever claim that the world is not ready.  Midwives forever see the world pregnant with God’s promise.  As midwife, Bernice Reagon would sing, “There’s a new day coming.  Everything is going to be turning over.  Everything is going to be changing over.  Where are you going to be standing when it comes?”

The wording used for the Exodus story is critical.  Throughout this prologue, the Hebrew people are not referred to as slaves but as strangers.[10]  The Hebrew people, the Children of Israel are referred to as strangers in the land of Egypt.  Said then 36 times[11], 36 times!, in the Torah, the heart of Jewish morality, as an injunction to Jewish understanding and spiritual practice is how the Jewish people should treat the stranger.  Said over and over again, “Remember you were once strangers in the land of Egypt, so you should treat the stranger in your own land.”   In other words, do not de-humanize, do not minimize, do not trivialize the people . . . the people or beings or things that are not like you, for it is the beginning of violence and will get into your head, under your skin, and into your bloodstream so that you can justify bullying, evil, and contemptible things—as those things were done to you. 

In reality, the stranger is the one who is necessary for our moral and spiritual development as compassionate people.  Our moral and spiritual lives depend on our relationship to the stranger.  As Jesus taught in the Good Samaritan story, it is the stranger who saves our lives.  As the Syro-Phoenician woman changed the heart and mind of Jesus, it is the stranger who broadens and enlarges our table and saves us, makes our hearts more full of compassion. The stranger teaches us things about the breadth and width and length of God’s love that we could not have imagined. 

A colleague of mine in seminary, Samuel Lubongo, a pastor from Kenya, encouraged me to go on international mission trips, “Because,” he said, “because, Mike, if you stay in your own country, you think only your own mother cooks well.”  We learn of the expanse of God’s love through the stranger.  But it is against strangers that we have dug the deepest trenches, built the highest walls, and constructed the largest prisons.[12] 

Over and over again, this Biblical story is told in our wider culture.  We are deciding every day what it means to be “human.”  Corporate lobbyists are humans, afforded full protection of Pharaoh.  Hobby Lobby is considered a “person” afforded protection of religious freedom.  But when prisoners in Guantánamo Bay, invoking the same protection given to Hobby Lobby, asked for religious freedom to pray during the Obama Administration, the Justice Department argued that they should not be afforded these same protections because they are not human beings.  Defense attorney Jon Eisenberg said: "It is truly grotesque for the Obama folks to insist that a for-profit corporation is a person, but a flesh-and-blood human being at Guantánamo Bay is not."[13] 

I relate that story because it is critical to recognize that we know that this betrayal of the imago Dei is not Republican or Democrat, did not begin with Stephen Mitchell or the Trump Administration.  No, it is a disfiguring of the imago Dei within us, a violence and an open wound found within who we are supposed to be as human beings.  We too often look to people who are enemies on the playground, across the aisle, and those who disagree with us at church and see them as less than human beings.  We are prepping ourselves—getting ready to do violence to others.  That violence becomes even more manifest when our fear overtakes us to make city, state, and national policy about who is a human being and who is not. 

It is instructive that the first thing Moses asks Pharaoh to do is to let his people go so that they may only make a three day journey in the wilderness to worship and pray to God.[14]  Pharaoh, afraid of the swarm, with no knowledge of God or these people, enjoins the Children of Israel to work harder.  “They are lazy!” he says, “Work harder, work longer, bring your children.”

A whole group of people are seen as beasts of burden, marked as lazy, and the only antidote is for them to pick themselves up by their bootstraps, is to work harder and longer with less resources--Arbeit macht frei, work brings your freedom, that infamous phrase above the gate of the Auschwitz concentration camp.  We de-humanize to justify our bullying, our violent behavior.  Pharaoh’s words and language are being repeated regularly, consistently, and persistently so that words might be forged into action and action might then define who we are and turn our neighbor into a stranger we do not know. 

But, sisters and brothers, siblings and cousins . . . there is good news.  What the Exodus story teaches is that God’s purposes are being worked out by people who flip the script to midwife new life and a new day.  Pharaoh does not carry the day.  Already, from underneath, there are people who transform stranger into neighbor, teach nonviolence, and stand resolutely in that new day.  Pharaoh does not carry the day.  There’s a new day coming.  Everything’s going to be turning over.  Everything’s going to be changing over.  Where you going to be standing when it comes?  A new birth is happening.  Midwives are needed.  Thanks be to God for Shiphrah and Puah.  For you are made in the image of God.  I am made in the image of God.  Glory hallelujah . . . we are made in the image of God.  Amen.  

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[1] Coined by Hannah Arendt
[2] An ode to Justice Ginsburg.
[3] Ayten Gündoğdu, Rightlessness in an Age of Rights:  Hannah Arendt and the Contemporary Struggles of Migrants  (New York:  Oxford University Press, 2015). 
[4] Genesis 1:20-21.
[5]  Eric Pfeiffer, "Buchanan warns of flood of illegals," Washington Times, August 22, 2006, referencing Pat Buchanan’s book, State of Emergency: The Third World Invasion and Conquest of America (New York:  Thomas Dunne Books, 2006).
[6] A quick search immediately brought up:  “Illegal women, kids swarm US via Mexico after home countries report Obama ‘amnesty,’ free legal aid”; “Why they come . . . the children swarming our borders”; “Children swarming southern border prove a test to Obama’s immigration policy”; “Illegal Alien Children ‘Swarm’ School Registration Center Near Atlanta.”  Those were the first five articles that appeared on a google search, all from conservative/Tea Party perspectives.
[7] http://www.workingpreacher.org/dear_wp.aspx?article_id=501
[8] That, in fact, is the title of their report, “Close to Slavery.”  It can be found here:  http://www.gpn.org/splcenter.org.SPLCguestworker.pdf
[9] http://www.workingpreacher.org/dear_wp.aspx?article_id=501
[10] Everett Fox, The Five Books of Moses
[11] Cf. Exodus 23.9; Rachel Fabiarz, “Treatment of the Stranger:  Our Existential Relationship to Our Ancestors and How We Learn Empathy,” My Jewish Learning. http://www.myjewishlearning.com/texts/Bible/Weekly_Torah_Portion/Vaethanan_ajws3.shtml.
[12] Rev. Aric Clark, “Make Haste to Be Kind,” Fort Morgan Times, http://www.fortmorgantimes.com/opinion-columnists/ci_26161863/aric-clark-make-haste-be-kind.
[13] “Headlines,” Democracy Now!  July 14, 2014, http://www.democracynow.org/2014/7/14/headlines#71415
[14] Exodus 5:1

Sermon: Exodus/Wilderness Series 1, "Making a broad space," September 13, 2020

A Exodus 1 SJUCC 2020 

Exodus 1:8-14; Psalm 105:16-25; Matthew 11:28-30 

September 13, 2020

           Throughout most of the time that I am with you, I will be preaching from the Exodus and Wilderness stories in the Bible.  I do that because it is the birth story for the Jewish people.  As a Jew, the Exodus and Wilderness stories would have been foundational for Jesus.  The Gospel of Matthew uses the Exodus and Wilderness stories to point to Jesus and say, “This guy . . . the guy from the backwater town of Nazareth . . . he is the second Moses.”  To know the Exodus/Wilderness story is to know something of Jesus.

           Jesus says, “Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.  For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”  Yoke, throughout Scripture, is a word used to talk about the Jewish experience of imperial oppression.  It is characterized by its arrogance and the way that it devours the people and God’s good earth.  The yoke of empire says that you will only gain your salvation by unending work.  That all begins with Egypt.  Jesus acknowledges that Jewish history and counters with a way of being that is wholly different.  His yoke is characterized by gentleness, humility, and rest.  Jesus is different than any Pharaoh, Caesar, or Sovereign who has come before him.  Again, to know the Exodus and Wilderness story is to know something of Jesus.

           I also chose to do an Exodus/Wilderness preaching series because it rhymes with some of the challenges and joys I heard as I listened to your leaders talk about the glory that is St. John’s United Church of Christ in Jackson, Michigan.  We get back to the origin story.  We remember who we are.  We recognize that the difficult circumstance we are in, the mainline church declining, living in this poopy pandemic, and trying to cobble together something new . . . ugh, it can be so hard.  Right?  Church community can be glorious.  Church community can be hard work, damaging, and, at its worst, violent. 

           At the end of this sermon series, you may say to yourself, “This Mike Mulberry guy is really geeky about the Bible, spends way too much time thinking about faith, and maybe needs a real life.”  But I hope when we come to the end of the series, you will recognize that the God of the Exodus and the Wilderness, who seemed so far from the Hebrew people at the time . . . that God has been with us and leading us all along.  I pray that will be true.

           As Christians, we talk quite a bit about the word “salvation” and conservative and evangelical tradition has made that word primarily about the afterlife.  In Hebrew Scripture, however, particularly in the Exodus and Wilderness stories, salvation is rooted in this material world, in the land.  The Harper Collins Bible Dictionary talks about the root meaning of “salvation” having to do with a “’broadening’ or ‘enlarging’ and can connote the creation of space in the community for life and conduct.”[1] 

           That is the salvation the Living God delivered for the Hebrew people, the Children of Israel—a broadening, a space made for community life and conduct.

           Now I want to pause here to help the good people of St. John’s UCC really reflect on that meaning of salvation.  Because as I got a tour of the building and heard you all reflect on the ministries that you do at this church, this meaning sure sounds like the salvation St. John’s UCC offers the Jackson community on an ongoing basis.  You broaden a space for community life and conduct with the people you welcome into your building.  You enlarge and make a space for community life and conduct with ways you share your building with so many people in Jackson.  Literally, St. John’s UCC saves Jackson, Michigan, in an everyday way.

           The definition continues:  “More often than not, this is done with divine help, particularly in circumstances where God’s people face an adversary.”[2]

           As we begin the story, we know immediately who the adversary is—Pharaoh.  We learn that this Pharaoh rises to power not knowing how Joseph, the Hebrew, had saved the Egyptian Empire with his dream interpretations and prognostications.  Pharaoh, in his arrogance, thinks he and his empire are self-made.  We know better.  Joseph, the left-for-dead immigrant, follows the trade routes and ends up in prison only to rise to oversee Egypt’s economic recovery.  Pharaoh considers himself the sun, the moon, and the stars.  In other words, he allots for himself position and power that should only be reserved for the gods or, as the Hebrews know, for God. 

           At most churches I serve, I teach a Bible 101 class.  Either in the first or second session together, I relate to everyone that real study of the Bible begins by asking “power questions.”  We cannot really know Divine truth unless we begin by asking basic questions like:   who holds power; who is on the outside looking in; and where is God’s being and activity placed?  As we read and responded in our Affirmation of Faith, earlier in the service, the ancient world assumed that if you were in power, the gods favored you.  If your people had conquered another people, your gods were stronger than theirs.  The status quo is thus because the gods ordained it to be so. 

           The Exodus and Wilderness stories are a response to this ancient understanding.  Pharaoh believes he is in power because Ra has ordained it to be so.  And Pharaoh is the divine mediator between Ra and the known Egyptian world.  Instead, far outside the pomp and circumstance of the palace, out in the wilderness, opposed to Pharaoh’s State-sponsored slavery and violence, another story is being told.  In keeping with Pharaoh’s theology, later in history the philosopher Aristotle stated, “Some are born to be slaves.  And some are born to be slave masters.”  The God of the Exodus knows that Aristotle’s statement is rubbish and that we are all born to be the Beloved Children of God.

           While Pharaoh believes he has a Divine right to make the Hebrews, the people he doesn’t know, work harder and longer as slaves, the God showing up in the wilderness has come close, knows the suffering of the people, and does not believe their divine destiny is to remain slaves.  Space needs to be made . . . broadened and enlarged for the Hebrew people to experience true community.  In contrast to what Pharaoh believes of the Egyptian god, Ra, the God in the wilderness has not ordained the status quo to be just so.  This God desires, yearns for, is willing to draw close to, the most powerless in the world.  This is the God of the Exodus and the Wilderness. 

           The God of the Exodus and the Wilderness shows up and right away questions absolute power and certainty.  This God cannot be pinned down or enshrined in a particular spot.   This God doesn’t remain in one place.  The God of the Exodus and the Wilderness is on the move, lives in a tent.  To know the activity and movement of God then, we learn that this is not so much a God of answers--but questions not to tear down or destroy but to reveal and disclose the Truth.

In keeping with God’s character then, the Hebrews are delivered from Egypt only to walk out into the wilderness on an aporetic journey.  Aporetic is a word used by Jewish and German-born philosopher and human rights advocate, Hannah Arendt, who helped a number of people find safe passage out of fascist Germany, was herself arrested by the Nazis, and escaped to the United States.  Arendt knew that to carve in stone parameters for human rights would allow any fascist or two-bit dictator to co-opt right and rule to the point where the most vulnerable would eventually have no rights at all.  Better she thought, to challenge power through Socratic questioning and aporetic inquiry.  Aporetic was a way of saying that important questions forever ended up in perplexities but working with that perplexity and those unending questions made us a better people.  Aporetic inquiry does not lead to a path or road on solid ground, but it does point to the possibility of navigating the uncertain world of perplexities to trace a passage, one that was not available before—a critical practice that one takes on when there are “no fixed directions,” no familiar “landmarks,” or “bearings” to rely on.    Aporetic inquiry is “thinking without a bannister” because we recognize we are living in a time or place of uncertainty.  Our willingness to dialogue and question allows for a reexamination of key concepts, principles, and assumptions because we are on a perplexing journey which defies easy resolution.[3] 

What Hannah Arendt describes in aporetic inquiry and Socratic questioning is the journey God puts the Hebrew people on as they walk out into the wilderness.  A space has been opened, broadened, expanded, but there are no fixed directions, no familiar landmarks, or bearings to rely on.  The Hebrew people will have to learn how to forage for food in this new place, how to distill water they can drink in this new place, how to be a community and a people in this new place. 

This is the primary reason I decided we should embark on this sermon series.  In the changing landscape of the church, in the midst of a global pandemic, one of the last things we have is certainty.  All that we find around us is perplexity.  How shall we be on this new and sometimes frightening journey?  The rules have all changed.  We don’t know where to go to get our most basic needs met as a people.  And there has been conflict as we all try to figure out who we shall be on this perplexing, aporetic journey. 

But this is where our Biblical stories are a gift to us.  We learn from the Exodus and the Wilderness story that living in a perplexing wilderness does not mean God has deserted us.  On the contrary, God is on the move.  As the people of God, sisters and brothers, siblings and cousins, we are not necessarily called to resolution and certainty but to affirm the presence of God, ask the questions (some that may have no real answers), and learn what it means to be on this new journey.  We trace a passage that was not available before.  Just because this journey is different, does not mean it is without the blessing of God. 

God is on the move.  So we, as the people of God, should be too.   Where we were in the not-so-distant past, it may have been safe and certain and known.  But the Biblical story seems to teach us that our God is not found in the safe and the certain and the known.  I invite you, to walk with me in the wilderness, with a God who would never look upon you and say anything less than, “You are my Beloved Children, created in my image, just for this uncertain, perplexing journey.  Do not think for a second that your lowly estate in this moment means I approve of the status quo.  Rather, I am working through you to transform the slavery, violence, and oppression of every Pharaoh and Caesar until all of Jackson, all of Michigan, might experience a broad and expansive place, and know salvation.”  Amen. 

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[1] “salvation,” Powell, Mark Allan, ed. HarperCollins Bible Dictionary. Abridged Edition. (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2009).  https://www.bibleodyssey.org/HarperCollinsBibleDictionary/s/salvation.

[2] Ibid.

[3] Ayten Gündoğu, Rightlessness in an age of rights:  Hannah Arendt and the contemporary struggles of migrants (New York:  Oxford University Press, 2015), pp. 22ff

 

Sermon for the Sixth Sunday in Easter, May 21, 2017, "Harmony or outsinging the Flanders family?"

A Easter 6 BFC OL 2017

Exodus 15:1-3, 17-18, 20-22

May 21, 2017

            If you have ever seen the amazing animated sitcom, “The Simpsons”, you know that some of the recurring characters are the overly helpful, friendly, cheery, churchy, and nerdly neighbors, the Flanders.   The patriarch of the Flanders family is Ned whose customary good-natured response to any of Homer Simpson’s often rude or cantankerous comments is, “Okily, Dokily!”  Homer Simpson is not likeable.  But Ned Flanders and his family, in all of their friendly and cheery vanilla ice cream slurping, white bread snarfing, white milk sipping perfection come off as insufferable.  Probably the reason Ned and the family Flanders are so humorous is because we all know of people like that in our own community.  We had a family like that in our hometown.  And one Sunday that family sat in the pew directly in front of the whole Mulberry clan. 

            You should know that my family, although not the Simpsons but to the disappointment of my mother, not the most well-behaved group around, consider families like this . . . target practice.  To this day, we are a rather snarky group.  If one of my sisters or my brother takes themselves too seriously in a group text, the rest of the group will put them in their place.  These texts are interspersed with my mother pleading to the group, “Please be nice.”  In our family, such pleas seem to incite less moral and more snarky behavior. 

The scene is set.  Our version of the Flanders family, mother, father, and their two well-groomed, brightly bespectacled children, people who take themselves very seriously, are sitting in front of us on a particular Sunday.  Yes, snarky comments were made.  The whole Mulberry pew was shaking with suppressed laughter.  And, true to form, my mother said the magic words, “Be nice.”  Blood in the water.  More quips.  More laughter.  As the Flanders family heard our suppressed laughter, they turned, smiled and began snickering themselves, as if they were in on the joke.  This led to even greater shaking in the Mulberry pew. 

            All of this culminated with the singing of the closing hymn, “The Battle Hymn of the Republic.”  Now I grew up in a family, community, and State where love of all things Lincoln was encouraged.  In fact, my hometown is mentioned twice in Spielberg’s “Lincoln” movie.  Yeah, we all noticed.  We are all hardcore Lincoln fans.  So maybe when “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” began to play, the Mulberry family became a little too serious about the hymn volume?  Ah, but the Flanders family in front of us would not be outdone.  They sought to top us with their volume.  They were much more serious about the hymn.  Or were they?  We increased our volume.  They, in turn, increased theirs.  Right there in church, “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” was encouraging a family sing-off of epic proportions—all reaching a crescendo with “glory” and “hallelujah.”

            I’m pretty sure the Mulberry/Flanders sing-off, although straight out of a sitcom itself, had little to do with what it means to be church.  In effect though, I sometimes wonder if the Christian Church hasn’t become about who not only can sing the loudest but about proving who is the most righteous, who has the most sway, and whose family or group gets to carry the day, sometimes who can say the meanest things in the most cheerfully kind fashion.  We become insufferable.

            We have lost any understanding that there might be something transcendent to which or for which we might express spontaneous gratitude and praise.  So that what the church becomes, reflecting the wider culture and society, is about me and mine.  If Moses and Miriam broke out in new songs that described a vital, liberating way to understand God’s presence and power, they might be roundly chastised by congregational members who are upset by an unfamiliar tune.  Even as we acknowledge our ever-greater diversity, we expect church and the one hour and change on Sunday morning to be about me and mine, to reflect our needs, and wants, and wishes every week.  How are we to grow in God?  How are we to learn if all that we desire is to hear our own voice singing with gusto over the top of everyone else?  If diversity of ages, cultures, orientations, and preferences is given by God as a gift, why do we act like the church is only faithful when our song plays?

            The Protestant reformer, John Wesley, wrote out rules for congregational hymn singing in the 18^th Century which let me know that the Mulberry/Flanders phenomenon was not and probably will not be a new thing.  Although this is probably the favorite rule of the seven: “Sing Lustily – and with good courage. Beware of singing as if you were half-dead or half-asleep; but lift up your voice with strength. Be no more afraid of your voice now, nor more ashamed of its being heard, than when you sang the songs of Satan.”[1]  In other words, if you are belting out that Katy Perry tune (you know, that daughter of Satan) during the week with joy and vigor, make sure you are singing congregational hymns with joy and vigor. 

Most of Wesley’s rules are really about being a full-fledged member of the congregation and to recognize your role in it.  Congregational singing, for Wesley, reflected how we were to be in everyday faith and life.  Wesley’s brother, Charles, wrote over 6500 hymns so we know that the Wesley family believed strongly in the power of church music in everyday faith and life.  The anti-Mulberry/Flanders rule is: “Sing Modestly – do not bawl so as to be heard above or distinct from the rest of the congregation that you may not destroy the harmony, but strive to unite your voices together so as to make one melodious sound.”[2]  That is a pretty good rule for not only congregational singing but also community life, right?  Maybe even living in a democracy?  How often do we remember in our common life together that harmony is different notes playing together?  The etymology of harmony, in fact, is from a Greek verb meaning “to fit together, to join.”[3]  As our congregation becomes more and more diverse, I hope we are seeing that as a gift of God, an opportunity to make sweet harmony together.  For if the church does not represent this possibility to the world, how is the world to have any hope?

Hannah Arendt, a German-Jewish philosopher, journalist, and political theorist, was born in in 1906 and died in 1975. She fled Germany with the rise of Adolf Hitler and ultimately became a US citizen.  Arendt famously coined the term, “the banality of evil” using it in reference to the Jerusalem trial of Adolf Eichmann, a lieutenant colonel in the Nazi-SS and considered one of the architects of the holocaust.  In modern parlance, we often use “banality of evil” to speak of the way that evil is unremarkable, almost a low hum that can go unnoticed unless we remain vigilant.  We simply follow orders and go along to get along.  What Arendt meant by the term, “’the banality of evil’ was the inability to hear another voice, the inability to have a dialogue either with oneself or the imagination to have a dialogue with the world, the moral world.”[4]

The inability to hear another voice . . . so that we might modulate accordingly, maybe even change our tune to achieve some form of sweet harmony.  If that is to happen in the world, there will need to be organizations, systems, people who are open to the diversity that God intends as a gift.  It is difficult because it means we will have to learn, and grow, and go through difficult process of becoming and transforming. 

Yesterday, I was honored to be present for the ceremonial signing and celebration of the regalia bill which allows Native people to own their identity by wearing something of their Native tradition in graduation ceremonies.  When you think about the absolutely zany and original things we allow young people to tape on their caps or wear or not wear along with their robes, this should have been a no-brainer.  Owning your identity with a sense of pride should rank right up there.  But it wasn’t.  It took tons of work by Western Native Voice, high school students, legislators, allies, and friends.  What an incredible celebration.  Governor Steve Bullock shared some beautiful words to summarize the occasion.  He talked about when foreign dignitaries come to these ceremonial signings how they are intrigued by the number of flags Montana has behind the signers as they place their Dolly Smith Cusker Akers or John Hancock on a bill.  The number of flags represent the Native American nations within our State.  Governor Bullock said that those flags not only represent a tapestry but a foundation of what it means to be a Montanan.  Wow, I thought.  That could not sound more Biblically Christian.  

In an election that seems to be about who is the most Montanan or has the best Montana values, wouldn’t it be nice if there was some organization that was seeking to embody that, trying to be that, working on incorporating that diversity.  I looked around and saw the fabulous Executive Director of Western Native Voice, Marci McLean-Pollack, who worked so hard to make this an incredible success, and soon to become a member of our church.  I saw world traveler and soon to be 8^th grade graduate, Jodiah LaPlant there, becoming an active part of our youth group and probably selling tickets today.  I saw the incredible regional leader, John Smillie and State leader, Margie McDonald.  I saw prophet Dan Cohn there.  I saw Josiah Hugs’s son Billy, drum playing and singing with gusto there.  You may remember Josiah as one who gave a sermon in our church and leads out the Wellbriety groups here.  Sometimes I think we are not trying to become that rich Montana tapestry and foundation.  Sometimes I think . . . that’s who we already are . . . singing different notes together . . . in sweet harmony.

Thankfully, we are not singing “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” as our closing hymn because then I might have to show off my bawling voice and out-sing all the rest of you.  You are encouraged to sing lustily and joyfully.  But I hope that we, as a congregation, can grow into our own diversity by singing new songs that rhyme with our new learning and growing in God.  And the new songs some of us sing might just be the old stand-bys sung by others so that in the weeks that follow we sing the old stand-bys you have learned to sing, teaching others a new song.  My belief is if we can be those different notes playing together, we create a harmony that falls sweetly upon the ears of God.  And God’s smile becomes broad and wide, and I do believe I even hear Her singing along.  How often, making music, we have found a new dimension in the world of sound, as worship move us to a more profound:  Allelulia!  A deeper and more profound Alleluia.  Amen. 

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[1] http://www.gbcsanmarcos.org/Sunday%20Sermons/071216/Christmas_in_Psalms,_Hymns_&_Spiritual_Songs.pdf.

[2] Ibid.

[3] “Harmonia,” Henry George Liddell Robert Scott, A Greek-English Lexicon, http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/cgi-bin/ptext?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.04.0057%3Aentry%3D%2315282.

[4] “Interview with Lyndsey Stonebridge:  Thinking and Friendship in Dark Times: Hannah Arendt for Now,” OnBeing with Krista Tippett, May 18, 2017.  https://onbeing.org/programs/lyndsey-stonebridge-thinking-and-friendship-in-dark-times-hannah-arendt-for-now/.